Anti-Colonialism and the Malabari Mind
Written by: Jyothis James
To those Malabaris* who have reckoned with the reality of anti-Blackness (specifically anti-African American attitudes) in the United States and on the shores where Europe and her descendants’ claws have breached, there arises an important question to grapple with: As a Malabari, how does one fight global white supremacy?
Below, I outline an anti-colonial approach that will mentally position Malabaris to strategically and pro-actively combat anti-Blackness in the United States and the other forms of subjugation, disenfranchisement, and genocide that the wretched of the earth (i.e. the poor and laboring non-whites of the Global South and in white-settler states) endure globally. This is primarily gauged at the Keralite diaspora in North America. My approach is inspired by Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Sylvia Wynter, Angela Davis, B. R. Ambedkar, Steve Biko, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o who with surgical accuracy outline what is wrong and how one can strategically combat it.
1) A Malabari is not white, and in many cases will never be (especially if dark-skinned). If this non-whiteness is taken as given, then we can surmise that an anti-colonial stance that embarks from white “progressive” theory or political philosophy is ill devised. Derrick Bell and many Critical Race Theorists have noted that the only time a non-white group will gain any semblance of social advantage is if it is in the interest of whites (The Civil Rights Act and the simultaneous independence of former colonies are all testaments to this). Thus, white theories or theoretical work grounded in the European tradition is to be suspect.
2) If not white theory, where do we ground our resistance? Luckily, melanated peoples from Africa, Oceania, the Indigenous Americas, and South Asia (non-brahmanical [Jaina, Buddhist, Dravidian folk religion etc.]) and their diasporas have rich and millennia-long philosophical and recently (~500 years) anti-colonial traditions we can tap into. These sources have actively been deployed by anti-colonial thinkers for centuries to combat dominant forces. So, no you do not need to resort to DiAngelo and the like, to ground yourself in anti-racist work. Does this mean our theories have been perfect? No. But at least they have been more effective and dignifying than anything out of European political thought or some amalgamation seeking to be legible to whites. One instance to be proud of is that the first anti-colonial stance in South Asia was the Koonan Cross Oath taken by the St. Thomas Christians on 3 January 1653 against the Portuguese and the Roman Church. Additionally, the first instance of a military victory against European colonialism in South Asia took place in Malabar where the Kingdom of Travancore defeated the Dutch at the Battle of Kulachal in 1741 effectively preventing Dutch expansion in Malabar.
The Koonan Cross Oath taken against Portugese and Roman rule taken at Mattancherry, Kochi on January 3, 1653 by 25,000 Mar Thoma Nasranis
3) Your presence in the United States is because either you or someone from your family is providing labor for this country. Your residence may have been the result of the initial highly skilled and educated migrants, part of the later migrations through Nurse-mothers, or recently migrated through higher education, or you may even be undocumented as a result of socio-economic pressures. But at some point, you are here in this alien land because Malabari labor was opportune to whites. However, economic stability in the United States does not mean we have to be complicit in the exploitation of poor domestic minorities and the rest of the Global South via the U.S. Empire. Do not relish in the relative comfort and economic mobility you enjoy as a sign of your or your community’s exceptionalism like the house-slave of western plantations or the Indian civil servant of the British Raj relished in their proximity to their white overlords. It is an obsequious colonial mindset that will have you groveling for recognition and approval by white institutions at the expense of your fellow non-whites.
4) You are not Black Africana, nor will you ever be.** As non-white people, there is a lot to be learned from the Black Radical Traditions (both Continental and Diasporic). It can solidify the usually diluted and white-imitating theories we conjure as a result of colonial amnesia post-Indian independence or our relative economic comfort in the U.S. We cannot work on anti-Blackness as nebulous ahistorical bodies seeking to be “allies”, like some white suburbanite. As colonized and now racialized people, we must, like Black Africana and Indigenous peoples globally, identify our heritage and the historic and continued role of our people’s fight against imperialism. More importantly, we must know that we have made more than a century-long effort to battle imperialism while strategizing with Africana peoples and other subjugated nations. This cultural memory was denied to us, but it does not mean we should continue in a state of ignorance. Thus, it makes no sense to fight anti-Blackness in the United States as amorphous racialized people or “white-adjacents”. You must be able to fight anti-Blackness as Malabaris who are aware of why and how Malabaris ended up in the United States. We must acknowledge what travesties befell Malabar, and the Indian Subcontinent as a whole, to leave it so impoverished that we or our predecessors had to leave the comforts of family, culture, and ancestral land to seek better opportunities outside, and especially relegate ourselves to a white-dominant and fundamentally racist country like the United States.
5) Once we identify ourselves as Malabari, we must also identify with our South Asian diasporas globally. There are Indic communities in Southeast-Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean that have preceded us as a migratory population. Many have labored and lived with Black Africana peoples. By looking at how they have survived, negotiated, and thrived alongside other non-white people we may gain better perspectives on how we may progress.
Eustachius De Lannoy's surrender to King Marthanda Varma of Travancore at the Battle of Kulachel in 1741
6) In addition to the more established South Asian diasporas, we must also recognize the Malabari population that is laboring, and in many instances enslaved, in the Persian Gulf States. Their situation as migrant laborers along with other peoples of the Global South from Africa and Asia should give us pause on how the policies that we support in the U.S. lead to the exploitation of our co-ethnics on the other side of the world. We are not just a detached diaspora with a one-stop destination to visit our extended family in Malabar every few-years. We also have an obligation to the working class Malabaris and the predicaments they may endure through the matrix of global imperialism both in India and abroad.
7) We also have to realize that the allure to maintain dominant status is always tempting. Therefore not-challenging how our castes maintain hegemonic power and continue to exploit subjugated castes and tribes in Malabar is easy. St. Thomas Christians (this is my ethnicity) are notorious for exploiting subjugated labor for our cash-crops. Though this dynamic may shift in certain diasporas, we many times indirectly reify these structures or turn a blind eye. Likewise, St. Thomas Christians are generally deluded into thinking our Christianity will grant us good standing with whites. It will not. Look in the mirror. To whites, you are an ambiguous constellation of might-bes. Might-be Muslim, Hindu, Latin American, Black, or some other zoological taxonomy they try to pin you down to. But you do not look like something that has reached the zenith of rationality via Augustinian Christianity rooted in Greek philosophy. To quote Immanuel Kant the father of modern western philosophy, “this fellow was quite black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid”. I.e. your phenotype does not register as “saved”.
Gerald Horne’s book The End of Empires: African Americans and India covering the historic communication and activism between African-Americans and India.
Purchase book here: https://www.amazon.com/End-Empires-African-Americans-India-ebook-dp-B001P8223Y/dp/B001P8223Y/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
Therefore, to be anti-racist requires labor on key fronts for a Malabari. As Americans, you must fight for the freedom and dignity of African Americans and Indigenous Americans. Secondly, you can only do so as first gaining a racial consciousness as a Malabari and South Asian. It requires historic grounding in one’s heritage paralleling the intellectual awakening of Black Africana peoples via the re-centering of Blackness in Africana Traditions. To do this you need to enter a community of inquiry with your co-ethnics as well as other non-whites moving towards decolonizing their minds and girding themselves in an anti-colonial practice. Once you position who you are, you need to reckon with your people’s connection to their other diasporas as well as to the other subjugated darker peoples of the world. In this process, the strategies you can furnish will be revealed as you read what worked and what did not work for your predecessors. I wish I could detail those here, but that is for later articles on concrete strategy. However, in the meantime, you can prep with a reading list: Decolonizing the Malabari Mind
*I use Malabari to indicate regional origin for a more generationally stable ethno-cultural ontology. Though this can be used interchangeably for the ethno-linguistic referent Malayalee, not all descendants of Malayalees sepak Malayalam.
**If you are a Malabari of with Black Africana ancestry, you already have a thriving anti-colonial heritage to tap into through the Black Radical Tradition. This is aimed at those who are non-Black Africana.
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